Daughters: A Tale of Conventional Wisdom
by Haleine Delail
Summary: Buffy gets her ass kicked by a super strong, mindreading vampire.  What ancient, primal force could make this singular vampire so much stronger than the Slayer herself?  Previously posted as THEY CALL ME OGHA DUNVER.  Please read & review!
1. Chapter 1

_THIS TAKES PLACE VERY EARLY IN SEASON 5, SOMETIME AFTER DRACULA, BUT BEFORE BUFFY MEETS GLORY (FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WERE WONDERING WHAT'S UP WITH THE SUPER-STRONG CHICK WHO CAN WIPE THE FLOOR WITH BUFFY). ALSO, THE GANG IS STILL CONVENING AT GILES' HOUSE, SO HE HASN'T BOUGHT THE MAGIC BOX YET._

**Part 1**

She stood in the sand, very still, allowing the tide to bring sand in softly over her toes, then insteps, then ankles. She was puzzled, unmoving for fear of disturbing something precious, or perhaps something frightening.

"Precious or frightening?" she asked herself, almost without moving her lips.

Midnight at the shoreline, or was it midday? The southern sky seemed to suggest the former, the northern sky the latter. In the middle was a grey haze that brought the light and the dark into one. It was impossible to tell what time it was, where she was, or how she got there. She remembered going to sleep in her bed at her mother's house, and then being here – that was all.

She looked to her left, and saw a full moon, hovering high amid the constellations. She looked to her right and saw the sun, hanging in a blue, cloudless sky. Then she looked to her left again, then back.

"Midnight or midday?" she asked herself, a second question muttered aloud, for no one but the waves to hear.

But someone did hear.

"Precious or frightening," a voice said. "Midnight or midday? What difference does it make, in the end?"

Buffy turned her head to the left to see who was speaking. There was something _different_ about this voice, distinctive. The quality of the voice was feminine, earthly, and not supernatural – just unique. Then, a girl of approximately Buffy's own age stepped up beside her. The girl did not look at her, only stared at the sea.

"It's all the same, light and dark. The sun and the moon are two sides of the same coin, as are good and evil," the girl said, still staring. "We come from the same place. We are daughters. And in the end, we die in the same way. But there is life beyond."

The girl then turned to look at her. She was lovely, with soft strawberry blonde hair that played in the moonlight, and a heart-shaped mouth with rosy red lips. Buffy could not ascertain the color of her eyes, as the darkness shrouded them from a clear viewing. The girl's lips began to pull slowly at the corners, and by the time Buffy awoke from this dream, in her own bed in her mother's house, the strawberry blonde girl's expression was one of primal glee, as well as kindred knowing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2**

"_We come from the same place_," Giles repeated. "_We are daughters, and in the end, we die in the same way._"

"Yes Giles," Buffy said, impatiently as her Watcher emerged from the kitchen with a steaming mug of tea. "It's not going to change, no matter how many times you repeat it."

Giles sat down at his desk, paused, and began to chew on the earpiece of his eyeglasses. He began to try to speak several times, and hesitated. Finally, he asked, "And you're fairly certain that this was a _prophetic _dream, yes?"

"Fairly certain, yes, considering that the girl in my dream was practically wearing a flashing neon sign around her neck that said _this is a prophetic dream_."

"All right," he sighed. "Anything else you can remember?"

Buffy considered. "Oh, at the very end of the dream, she smiled."

"She smiled?"

"Yeah, but it was a smile that gave me the total wig. It was like she could read my mind, like she knew stuff about me, wanted to sleep with me and maybe kill me all at once. It was a penetrating smile, you know?"

"Interesting," Giles said, falling back into his earpiece-chewing stupor.

"So what do you think?"

"Well, it sounds like fairly standard pagan fodder, about light and dark being two sides of the same coin, about being _daughters_, perhaps of the earth," Giles said. "And the bit about coming from the same place and dying in the same way, again, the cycle of life, we're all connected, all part of the same great mother... or something."

A pause. Buffy's incredulous look hadn't changed.

She asked, "So what do you think?"

"I think that it's not the message that needs working out, because the message is simple. It's _why _you're getting the message, and why now. The young woman in your dream could be a type of spirit guide, but... it doesn't explain the _why_ of the thing. Few humans are more connected to the primal forces than you, if any, and it doesn't seem as though you need reminding."

"Maybe it's my new-and-improved supersonic training regimen that's got the spirit getting all guidey," Buffy offered. "Since you became my Watcher again, it's been all spiritual all the time, and maybe we awakened something."

"Perhaps," he said. "But I think you should be especially careful how you tread, just to be safe."

"So I should slay _en pointe_ tonight?"

"Just be prudent."


	3. Chapter 3

**Part 3**

She was in her fourth cemetery of the evening, and man, it was a slow night for Sunnydale's undead. Almost three in the morning, and not a vamp in sight since eleven. Buffy found herself disappointed, and then scolded herself. This is the kind of thing Dracula had been talking about – the darkness within that made her kindred with the darkest of the dark. All summer long, she had been patrolling extra-hard, even when there was no immediate threat. Dracula had called it _hunting_, and he had been right. The darkness was coming to the surface more and more, so much so that she'd been going out looking for it.

But her new training schedule with her old Watcher was supposed to change all of that. More precision, more strength, more focus. Less darkness. Peaceful when the unholy forces are quiet, call to duty when they boil up. Such was the life of a Slayer, or at least that's the way it should be.

"You look disappointed," a voice said, from behind her. "Not enough nasties out for you tonight?"

Buffy stopped in her tracks. It was _that voice_, the one from her dream. She had known there was something strange about it... but really it wasn't the voice that was strange, it was simply that that the girl had an accent. She seemed to be Irish, and her words lilted off her tongue in a beautiful, almost curvy, way. Briefly, Buffy chuckled to herself for being all mystified by an accent, and made a mental note to mention it to Giles when next she saw him.

She also made a note to examine later how in the hell this woman could know what she was thinking. She was getting pretty sick of the mind-reading crap, as a matter of fact. Was the girl a mind-reading demon? Was it gypsy magick like Dracula's? Wiccan telepathy, like what Willow was working on?

"You've heard my voice before have you?" the girl asked, reading Buffy's stiff body language. "Perhaps on the beach, in a place where light meets dark?"

Buffy turned to face her. It was she, indeed. Strawberry blonde hair playing in the moonlight, a lovely red mouth turned up in a knowing smile. But she got the distinct feeling that she was not face-to-face with a spirit guide. Buffy sensed danger, and her hand instinctively went to her back to find the stake stuffed in the waistband of her jeans, even though she was pretty sure that this girl wasn't a vampire. How could she be?

"You know, I've really had enough of you mind-ready-types traipsing around inside my head. I don't want to have to steel myself against another brain-control thingy, so if you're not looking for a smackdown, I'd suggest you be on your way."

"Is that what your Watcher told you, love?" the girl asked her, tauntingly, with mock concern. "When you told him about your _prophetic _dream in which I played the role of prophet, did he tell you that I was a mind-reader and that you'd have to steel yourself against me?"

Buffy was taken aback. After a pause, she asked, "Who are you?"

The girl smiled. "They call me Ogha Dunver," she said simply. No follow-up, no bravado, not even a menacing crossing-of-the-arms-across-the-chest. Just a quick introduction.

Again, Buffy was taken aback. Again, she paused. Finally, she said, "And I'm supposed to know you... why?"

"I'd have thought you would," Ogha replied, stepping forward casually. "I'd have thought I'd be quite well-known in the circles in which you travel."

Ah-ha. _Here_ was the bravado.

Buffy smirked. "Well, I've never heard of you, so I guess I won't have to worry about getting all sentimental when I kill you."

Unperturbed, Ogha continued to taunt, and began to walk in a circle around Buffy. She came to a stop, face to face with the Slayer. "You see," Ogha said, as her human visage melted into a vampire's demon face, "I'm no ordinary vampire."

"Wow," Buffy sniffed, having seen the vampire's true face, and having regained her old sarcastic composure. "With the crazy vibes you were giving off, I could have sworn that you were something much worse, like a Lamudsruelf demon or a Erialeduab troll (they can both walk around in a human guise), but it turns out you're just another lame-ass bloodsucker claming to be no ordinary vampire." Buffy chuckled. "And here I thought the night had finally gotten interesting."

Ogha smiled sweetly. "Try to convince yourself all you like, love, but it doesn't explain why I'm in your dreams, or for that matter why I know about them."

Buffy couldn't argue with this.

"And it also doesn't explain why I can do this."

Ogha threw a single undercut straight at Buffy's chin, and it sent the Slayer flying through the air, landing her atop a mausoleum in a different plot of the cemetery. Buffy wasn't hurt badly, but she was stunned.

_She had seen the face_. She had seen the woman's face disappear and replace itself with a vampire's, so she could rule out any other demon species. But vampires, save for a few, couldn't even ring Buffy's bell these days, let alone punch her across a cemetery. Maybe this one lame-ass vamp wasn't such a lame-ass after all.

Buffy slid down the side of the mausoleum, landing on her feet, only to find Ogha waiting for her, exposing her fangs in that same weird smirk she had been giving Buffy ever since the dream the night before.

She was not going to make the same mistake twice. This bitch was dangerous, and Buffy was going to dust her.

A punch from the Slayer, a right hook across the jaw.

No reaction from Ogha, only a snarl.

Another punch from the Slayer, this time harder, across the same spot on the vampire's jaw.

A normal vampire, or even Spike, would have been knocked off its feet by a blow that hard, a human would have sustained brain damage. Ogha turned her head to cushion the blow, and Buffy heard her exhale harshly as though she'd felt some pain, but still no notable reaction.

The third punch was met with the palm of Ogha's hand. She had caught Buffy's fist in mid-trajectory, something only a handful of beings in existence could ever have done. A battle of sheer strength ensued between the two, Buffy pushing forward with her fist, Ogha pushing back with her palm. They stared each other in the eyes and gritted their teeth, each unwavering for a time. Buffy noticed that while the vampire pupils shone in their usual glowy yellow, the human irises around them were a brilliant green.

Ultimately, Ogha was able to best the Slayer, pushing her backward, sending Buffy toppling to the ground.

"What was the word you used? Lame-ass?" Ogha asked, her Irish brogue more completely apparent than ever. "'Cause I'm not exactly from around here, and I'm dying to know what it means."

Buffy didn't answer. She just stared in shock, which then became a tight-jawed resolve. Her newfangled Slayer training had taught her that fear was okay, a natural reaction to unnatural, unfamiliar phenomena, and this situation was plenty unfamiliar. But still she was not comfortable showing it. It was against her nature. She stood up, sticking her chin in the air defiantly.

"You're a strong one," Ogha said to her. "You're the pluckiest Slayer I've ever known, and believe you me love, that's sayin' something."

"I'm so pleased that you're happy with my performance," Buffy said, unwavering.

Ogha chuckled with an arrogant little sniff. "But we both know that in the end, I'll win. Look at you, you can barely stand, and I have not even flexed a muscle."

"So now you've resorted to gloating?"

Ogha Dunver moved very close to Buffy, so that if she'd had breath, the Slayer would have been able to feel it. Her vampire face gave way to her benign-looking human mask. Barely above a whisper, she declared, "You and I, Slayer, we are kindred, and there is going to be one _hell _of a fight. _We shall wreak havoc_. My army shall rise, all the daughters will come together and the world shall tremble."


	4. Chapter 4

**Part 4**

A vampire with super-strength (well, more super than normal) invades her dream to give her a pagan blessing or something, and then shows up in a cemetery to beat the crap out of her. Those were two things that ordinary vamps weren't supposed to be able to do. So what was making this one so powerful? Sure, Drac had had some mojo, but he was frickin' _Dracula_, and he used gypsy magick, like any self-respecting evil Romanian Count ought to. And _he_ wasn't this strong. The Gem of Amara had been destroyed, and anyway, it didn't make a vampire stronger, just invincible. Buffy Summers had seen a lot of vampires in her time, and no single vampire had _ever_ been able to do what Ogha Dunver had done.

"So what gives?" she asked, after having recounted the story, in graphic detail to her friends. "I mean, this chick _creamed _me, and she was of the bumpy-foreheaded persuasion, I'm sure of it. I've never seen anything like it. And _again_ with the cryptic junk! What is it with 'all the daughters will come together'?"

"Well, initially, I thought she was merely spouting some of your average pagan material, the sacred feminine and such, but there may be something more to this _daughter_ business," Giles contemplated, very Britishly barely moving his lips.

"Maybe she works for Dracula," Willow offered. "He did have those minion sluts who were trying to have Giles for dessert."

"It doesn't explain the strength," Buffy said, staring at the floor. "The only time I've ever seen that kind of strength was when I fought Adam. And as we all know, he was no ordinary demon. He had some serious funding on his side, not to mention government-trained engineers and a handy-dandy uranium power core."

"Well, maybe this girl is made of uranium," Anya suggested, thumbing disinterestedly through a magazine.

"Hello? She's a _vampire_. A vampire? Those things that try to bite you, so you kick them and poke them with a stick, and then they go poof? Anyone remember?" Buffy asked the room.

"All right, all right," Giles said, kneeling to extract some volumes from his oft-used credenza-slash-bookshelf. He handed Buffy a thick, brown leather one that pretty much looked like all the others. "This volume chronicles vampires of unusual origin. It sounds like this girl, her strength, her mind-reading abilities... well, I'd say she's probably very, very old. A vampire would have to take several hundreds of years, maybe more, to cultivate that type of power, assuming she didn't come by it somewhere by unnatural means."

"How about I reasearch the unnatural means?" Xander offered, picking up yet another volume from the credenza. "Vampire steroids – I'm on it."

"What do you mean _cultivate _power?" Buffy asked Giles.

"I'm not sure exactly," he replied, removing his glasses. "You've seen how easily a young vampire will disintegrate into dust at the slightest exposure to sunlight. But you've also seen how Spike can walk around smoking for quite some time, albeit covered with a leather coat, before he needs to come inside. I can only assume that he's built up a strength that comes from having been around for a hundred and twenty years. What if this vampire girl had seven or eight hundred years to foster her given demon strength, and maybe learned some mind-reading spells along the way?"

"So you're looking for a really, really old chick," Xander confirmed for Buffy, gesturing to the book in her hands.

"Or alternatively," Giles continued, "She could have had some of those powers before she became a vampire, and her vampiric state merely enhances it. The demon takes over the body of the human host when a vampire is sired, but it does not remove all of their intrinsic attributes."

"I suppose," Buffy said, brow furrowed. "There's something about her..."

Giles placed his hand comfortingly on her shoulder, and said, "We'll find out who she is, and we will destroy her, together. Don't be too alarmed by this."

She looked up at him like a frightened child. "You weren't there, Giles. You didn't see what she did to me, and how easily she did it."

Again, he tried to comfort her with a pat on the shoulder. "Look through this book. I bet you'll find your girl in there, a sketch or a daguerrotype or something, and then perhaps we'll have a name, something to go on..."

"She told me her name," Buffy interrupted, just now remembering.

"And _now _ you tell us?" Xander asked, his exasperation wrinkling the pages of the ancient text he had been reading.

"Her name is Ogha Dunver," Buffy said.

"Ogha Dunver," Giles said, falling into pensive-mode once more. "That name sounds remarkably familiar to me."

"So we're looking for someone really old _and _famous?" Buffy asked. "Someone infamous, like Angel was in his bad-ass days?"

"Quite possibly," he answered distractedly, going for another book.

This was not overly comforting to Buffy.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part 5**

_"Dear Diary, I feel so lost. Everything I am has been compromised by this new threat, and I feel as though I am slipping backward into some black abyss. A female vampire has come into my life and menaced my sense of duty, my very sense of self. I no longer have confidence in who I am, or in my place in this world._

_"Though oddly, I feel drawn in by her. I am soothed by her voice, her accent, her essence. Something about her makes me feel as though she is right _– we are kindred._ I want to believe in what she says, I want to get lost in her green eyes – why? Is it true that my power comes from darkness, and being beaten senseless by an evil fiend is attracting me somehow?"_

"Do you really expect to find real answers in a diary?"

Buffy looked up from her writing, unsurprised to see Ogha Dunver standing beside her. She was sitting at Giles' desk in his home, only just now noticing that the sun had come up. "It's not my diary. It belongs to Giles. I'm just borrowing it."

Buffy put down her pen and smiled. "How did you get in here?" she asked. "I couldn't have invited you – this is not my home."

"It is your home, more and more," Ogha answered, circling around the desk to stand in front of Buffy. "This is your domain, where it all happens."

"Well, we don't have the library anymore."

"I'm not talking about this house."

"All right then," Buffy said, standing to look the other girl in the eye. "How did you get in _here_?"

"I didn't _come _here, I was brought. I keep telling you, we are the same. I'm not choosing to visit your dreams any more than you're choosing to visit mine. We are drawn to each other."

"Because we are daughters?" Buffy asked, hesitantly.

"Because we are daughters," Ogha confirmed.

"Of darkness?" Buffy asked.

"Of something else."

"What?"

"For that, you'll have to consult the writings," Ogha said, gesturing to the open diary on the table.

"I thought you said that the diary can't answer questions," Buffy protested, her bottom lip protruding like a disappointed little girl's.

"I didn't say that. I merely asked if you expected it," Ogha explained.

"I didn't expect answers, I only wanted to ask questions and talk about my problems."

"So it's all about you, then?"

"I know, I'm selfish and short-sighted," Buffy said, shamed. Then, suddenly, she asked indignantly, "Wait, are you telling me to get over myself, and I'll find the answer? Is that what this is all about?"

"No, I'm telling you to go _further_ into yourself and you'll find the answer."

"Into myself?"

"What's in the diary but yourself? Isn't that what a diary is for?"

Buffy hesitated, confused by the other girl's revelations. She read over what she'd written, and she didn't see the answer. "I still don't know."

"Look back a bit through time, love. Keep watch. Learn."


	6. Chapter 6

**Part 6**

"Buffy!" Xander's voice was calling to her. "Hey Buffy, wake up!"

"Hunh?" she grunted as she sat up from Giles' desk. She had drifted off while researching vampires of unusual strength and origin.

"We're not doing all the research on our own," he said, touching her shoulder and smiling. "You've got to pull your share of the weight, missy."

"Sorry guys," she said, rubbing her eyes. "How long was I out?"

"About twenty minutes," Giles said from his armchair in the corner.

"It turns out, mind-reading spells are a dime a dozen, mind control spells are almost as bountiful," Willow updated her. "But I haven't yet been able to find a simple spell that allows dream visitation, it's all wrapped up in other magicks, which has to be sort of incubated over time. Hundreds of years, in fact. And it's _really_ difficult to do it without a soul, so maybe Giles is right about this vam..."

Buffy stared at the book in front of her. "I just had another one."

"A-a dream?" Giles said, looking up concernedly. "About Ogha Dunver?"

"Yeah," Buffy said quietly. She looked at Willow. "Except she said she's not _visiting_ my dreams. She said she didn't come there, that she was brought there. And then she said more stuff about how we're the same, and daughters, the darkness, blah, blah..." her voice trailed off.

Giles closed his book and crossed the room. He knelt down next to her and asked, "What else did she say? Tell me everything."

The others gathered around to hear, as well.

Without looking at them, Buffy said, just one level up from a murmur, "I was sitting right here at this desk. I was writing in a diary. I was writing about how I felt. Only I knew it wasn't my diary, that belonged to Giles, that I was just using it. Then she showed up and told me that she doesn't come into my mind, she is brought."

Willow wondered, "But if she isn't going there consciously, then how can she remember being in your dream later on? You said she mentioned being in your dreams, the last time you met her, right?"

"But she also said that she doesn't choose to be in my dreams any more than I choose to be in hers," Buffy said. "So we must be sharing dream space somehow. Having the same dreams."

"Didn't that happen to you and Angel?" Willow asked.

"Yeah, but that was The First messing with us, and I've also had the same thing happen with Faith when she was in her coma. There's no consistency there, so I don't think we can find a link this way," Buffy said, more thinking aloud than anything.

"And then the stuff about being connected?" Xander asked.

"To darkness," Giles assumed.

Buffy paused, trying to remember. "I thought that, but she said that we are both daughters of something else, but wouldn't say what. But she didn't _deny_ that we are daughters of darkness, only implied that there was more to it than that."

The room was silent, everyone thinking.

After a bit, Buffy added, "And she said that I should look further into myself to find the answer."

"Well, that's helpful," Xander said. "Every self-help guru since the dawn of man has said that!"

"No, she said," Buffy closed her eyes tight, and tried to shut out everything else except her memories of the dream. She spoke haltingly."She said that the diary is myself, because it's all about me. It's my thoughts, my feelings... and that I should look into myself... and go back in time."

"She wants you to read your own diary?" Anya asked, scrunching her nose.

"I don't keep a diary anymore," Buffy said, looking at Giles in an appeal for help.

A glimmer of realization shone in her Watcher's eyes. He looked at her squarely and said, "But it wasn't your diary you were using. It was mine." He moved quickly across the room again.

"_You_ keep a diary?" Xander asked incredulously, as Giles disappeared behind a door beneath his staircase.

"No, it's the Watcher Diaries!" Willow exclaimed, practically jumping out of her shoes. "She's trying to tell us we'll find the answer in the Watcher Diaries!"

Giles emerged from under the stairs dragging two large old wooden crates stuffed with old books with yellowing, disintegrating pages.

Everyone grabbed a volume, knowing that their task now was simply to find any reference to Ogha Dunver that they could.


	7. Chapter 7

**Part 7**

It was slow going. The Watchers had been keeping diaries for roughly three thousand years, and had been handing them down through the council for almost as long. Giles' collection was, admittedly, incomplete, but still formidable. There were approximately 300 volumes stuffed into the wooden boxes, in over eighty languages, some of them dead, some of them merely obscure. Luckily, all they were looking for was a reference to a proper name, so Buffy, Xander and Willow could muddle through texts written in Roman lettering, while Giles and Anya took the ones in Hebrew or Aramaic, Sumarian, Chinese, Greek, Russian, and every other imaginable language that uses an alphabet dissimilar to ours. Even then, their comprehension was only about fifty per cent, and their fatigue, once set upon them, was unrelenting.

It was another full forty-eight hours of working nearly round-the-clock before there was any news from the Watcher Diaries. Fortunately, Buffy's patrol had not yielded any more meetings with the indomitable Miss Dunver. Buffy suspected that this was not luck, that the ridiculously strong vampire had simply chosen not to fight (or cripple) the Slayer again for a bit. Buffy had no doubt that if Ogha wanted to find her, she'd have no problem.

So, two nights later, after the coffee was gone, the Thai food had run out and Anya had fallen asleep drooling on Giles' throw pillows, Xander said quietly, almost matter-of-factly, "Oh, here she is."

"Who?" Willow asked, not really expecting to hear the answer they all longed for.

"Nancy Reagan," Xander said, looking squarely at Willow with an annoyed look.

"What?"

"Ogha Dunver, you goof," he said, rolling his eyes. "This volume makes mention of her, right here."

The whole gang laid aside their texts, and came to sit around Xander. Even Anya came alive for the event.

"What does it say?" Buffy asked, urgently.

"I, uh, haven't actually read it yet. I was too busy announcing the good news."

Giles took the text from Xander's lap and stared at it. "This is from a Watcher called Delbert Ayres, based in Ireland... only about ten years ago. This is his last entry, dated 10th October, 1991."

"Uh, why didn't anyone think to look at the Irish diaries first?" Buffy asked the room, scolding herself as well as the others.

Giles ignored the comment. "It says, '_Dear reader, I think this shall be my last bit of writing for the Watcher Diaries. After this, I shall write a farewell letter to my lovely Alice, still in Soho, awaiting my return. I should have known that I'd never be able to go home. _

_"Ogha appeared again last night at my door – this is the third time in as many nights. I still have not invited her into my home, but the next time I see her, I will. I cannot live this way; only leaving my home during daylight, knowing that she is out there, murdering and mutilating, and that it's my fault yet there is nothing I can do to stop her. I know that only the threshold of my door keeps me safe from a violent death at her hands, and I have no fight left in me. My heart cannot take seeing her again, and so I shall tonight let her drain my life. More important than anything is the fact that her very presence reminds me that I have failed as a Watcher, and I cannot live with that, not for one more day. Thankfully, I will not have to. I hereby pass the torch as of tonight. Please forgive me, future readers, and above all, please forgive me, Ogha Dunver.' _"

"Suicide by vampire?" Xander asked. "That's an interesting concept."

"Because he feels that he failed as Watcher," Giles whispered, contemplatively.

"Do you think Ogha killed his Slayer?" Buffy asked. "She certainly has the means."

"But then why would he say 'forgive me Ogha Dunver?'" asked Anya.

"Let's go back to the beginning of Ayres' entries and see if we can't get the whole story," Willow suggested.

Giles flipped backwards in the book until the handwriting changed, and he stopped. "Here were are. _'Beginning of the Narrative of Delbert Ayres, 5__th__ April, 1985._

_"The Slayer has today finally made herself known to me. She ran from her family last night, and arrived on my doorstep this morning, saying she'd been sent by a shifty man with a cane. Once I explained her true calling, she showed no sign of disbelief, and actually did not seem in the least surprised. Scepticism aside, truthfully, I think she is glad to be away from her family, the bunch of stoic religious fanatics that they are. She says she will never return to them – I must agree with her decision._

_"We began with an Eastern meditiation, which the Slayer found to be very tedious, but I explained that it was essential to find her center, in order to focus her energies and concentrate her power. Once this was done, she was extremely eager to learn, and is delighted to have a purpose. She is plucky, bright and shall be a delightful partner._

_"For posterity's sake: The Slayer is fifteen years old, born on 12__th__ December, 1969. She was called nearly thirty days ago, on 8__th__ March, 1985. She has reddish-blonde hair, green eyes and answers to the name of Ogha Dunver."_


	8. Chapter 8

**Part 8**

In all of the times that various vampires had threatened to turn her, Buffy had thought about the twisted poeticism of it, but had never bothered to wonder what would actually happen if a Slayer became a vampire. Now she knew. Dark power compounded. Slayer strength and vampire strength, concentrated into one person.

No one spoke for a long time. Everyone stared at their feet or at Buffy, afraid to state the obvious. Naturally, Anya was the one who finally broke the silence.

"She was a Slayer. You've got a mighty big problem."

"So it would seem," Buffy whispered, choking back tears. She wanted to weep, but not from fear. It was the utter operaticism of the whole thing. The full impact of the fight between good an evil was hitting her again, and in a completely new way. Death she had contemplated, but it was the_ life beyond_, as Ogha had put it to her in a dream, that she had never considered. It was too big, too much.

"_We come from the same place_," Giles said. "_We are daughters, and in the end, we die in the same way._ It's what she said to you the first time you dreamed of her."

"We come from the same place," Buffy repeated. "She started out in this thing as a Slayer, and..." she gestured to herself in lieu of saying "so did I."

"You are both daughters," Giles said, hesitantly, "of Sineya, the first Slayer. Isn't that what you called her, Willow?"

"Uh, yeah, when we did that combining-our-essences spell, we called on her spirit, and I read that all Slayers are known as Daughters of Sineya."

Xander ominously wondered, "What was that last part, _we die in the same way?_"

Again, a silence hung in the air. Buffy looked from person to person, searching for something to hold onto, something other than what was clearly on everyone's mind.

"You guys think she's planning to turn me?" Buffy asked. No one answered, but Buffy continued anyway. "Yes, of course she is. She said something about raising an army, how she and I were going to wreak havoc. She may not have meant in a fight, she may have meant as two Slayers-turned-vampires with super strength and bad attitudes. Then, she'll move on to Faith, then the next Slayer, then the next, until there's enough of us to... do whatever she wants to do."

"Which I imagine isn't good," Xander said.

"God," Willow sighed in disbelief. "I can't believe this. I can't believe she was a Slayer. I mean we've all seen what happens when a Slayer goes bad, but _this _is something I'd never even..."

"Me neither. But it makes sense. It's why she's in my dreams, why she says she doesn't come, but she's brought. It's just like with Faith, when we dreamed together when she was in a coma. We _do_ share dream space – we share... the same mind, in some ways," Buffy explained, more to herself than anyone. She began to pace. "Oh God! It means that she knows everything I know, she knows my methods, what I'm thinking, what I'll do next... how am I going to be able to fight her, Giles?"

"We'll think of something, Buffy," her Watcher assured her.

"We always do," Xander added.


	9. Chapter 9

**Part 9 **

But they didn't think of anything, not for a while. Buffy had a fitful night's sleep, dreading another dreamy confrontation with Ogha Dunver. Fortunately, she dreamed hardly at all, and when she did, she dreamed of old crusty volumes and ridiculously small print. And brushing her hair with a Barbie comb. She attributed this stroke of good luck to the fact that she hadn't the slightest idea what she was going to do the next time she saw the Slayer Vampire, and there was nothing worthwhile in her brain for Ogha (or whoever made these decisions) to mine for information. She had nothing.

In addition, she had a terrible day in class. The girl next to her in her History of Poetry in English class (Buffy thought her name was Melissa... or Melinda... or possibly Teresa) woke her up three times with a dirty look, whispering "snoring again." The professor asked her a question about reading she hadn't done, and she'd forgotten to put on deodorant that morning. She was sleepy, stupid and she reeked.

She did not do her patrol that night, but rather "chose" to stay in and attempt, with the help of her friends, to find an answer to the Ogha problem. Really, she knew that at least part of the equation was that she was terrified of running into the Irish vamp again, until she had a plan of attack. But she also knew that one more night's sleep meant more risk that Ogha would find out whatever Buffy and her friends had found out, so there was a real urgency to get this thing done as quickly as possible.

Giles had no coffee left in the house, so she was currently on her fourth mug of black tea, to help keep her awake. It was no match for her supernatural constitution, and she was mostly drinking it just to keep her hands busy.

The gang had at least five spent hours poring over Giles' texts and the internet for _any_ references to how to deal with compounded vampire and Slayer strength, but Ayres' portion of the Watcher Diaries were the only thing that came close, and he had died at her hands, without having found a way to defeat her.

And then around midnight, like a beacon of hope, Xander had an epiphany. He awakened the startings of an idea that just might incapacitate Ogha Dunver long enough for Buffy to kick her ass heartily, and then dust the crap out of her.

Giles immediately got on the wire to England to find out if this plan could be carried out to its fullest potential.

"Filthy ponces," Giles spat as he slammed the phone down.

"I'm guessing the answer was no," Buffy said, barely looking up from the useless text in her lap.

"Quentin wouldn't even speak to me," he sighed, sitting on the back of the sofa, rubbing his eyes. "And again, they show that their petty agenda is more important than life-and-death peril."

"You do still have some of that stuff left, don't you? I mean, since you never finished..." Buffy asked, trailing off, remembering a painful time in her relationship with her Watcher.

"I do, yes," he answered. "But I'm not at all sure that it's enough. The plan would work if we could just have a little help from the Council. Bastards."

"Well, it's just as well," Anya pointed out. "I mean, if they had agreed to help, we'd have to wait two or three days for their package to arrive. And Buffy would be running on no sleep when she faced this girl, so... bully for the Council I say." Her overly cheerful tone was rarely inspiring, but tonight, it made sense.

"That's true," Willow conceded. "When have _they_ ever been helpful? I mean, we were just looking to them for backup anyway. We might actually have enough stuff to get the job done ourselves."

"Exactly," rallied Xander. "So I say we circle the wagons, and take this bitch out _tonight_. Whaddya say?"

There was a silence as each individual weighed his or her options.

Then, rather than the great battly cry for which Xander had been hoping, Giles said, "I'm afraid we haven't any other choice."

"I'll get it ready," Willow said, disappearing upstairs into the loft. A moment later, she re-emerged, then in turn disappeared into the kitchen. While the rest of the crew discussed logistics, Willow brewed some poisoned tea in a yellow mug that said _Kiss The Librarian_. In ten minutes when it was ready, she handed the mug to Buffy.

"Let's do it," Buffy said. "But who's going to be the bait?"


	10. Chapter 10

**Part 10**

Giles considered himself pretty handy with a crossbow. Not that the Watcher's Council was any good at teaching anyone how to do battle, but his Ripper days had yielded a thing or two about good, efficient violence.

He wished that any of it were a comfort now.

Nonetheless, as he wandered through the cemetery, making no attempt to keep quiet, he clutched the weapon in his right hand so hard, he thought he might draw blood.

"Well, well," a voice said from behind a mausoleum to his left. A strawberry-blonde stepped out from behind the stone wall, smirking. "I thought I'd run all the humans out of here. Well, all the smart ones, anyhow."

Giles swallowed hard, and not without quaver said, "Ogha Dunver."

"You've done your homework then," she replied, advancing on him. With great effort, he managed not to retreat.

"Indeed," he mumbled.

"What I can't figure out is why the Slayer would send her own Watcher into a cemetery as bait. Can you answer that for me, Mr. Giles?"

"So you've done your homework as well," Giles said, still mumbling. "Good show, Miss Dunver."

"Clearly the two of you have some feeble, suicidal plan to take me down!" She said these last three words with a mocking seriousness. "You distract me by toyin' a bit with my mind, showing how much you know about me and my extremely checkered past, and then the Slayer swoops in out of nowhere and surprises me with a stake to the heart." She laughed grandly, genuinely amused.

"I thought it was genius," Giles commented dryly.

"Oh I'll say!" Ogha laughed more.

"Especially the part where is not just the two of us," Giles said, never losing eye contact with his adversary.

With these words, Xander and Anya emerged from the bushes behind Giles, each armed with crossbows. The three of them took aim, and sent three wooden arrows flying at the vicinity of Ogha Dunver's chest. She caught all three arrows in the air effortlessly, a split second before they made contact with her skin.

Undaunted, Giles barked a command, and the three of them each loaded their crossbows, and tried a second time. Two of the arrows she was able simply to bat away. The third stuck in her leg. She gave a momentary cry of pain, then promptly yanked the offending arrow out, and made a move toward her three attackers.

From behind the vampire, Willow appeared. "_Reniachne!_" she cried, and Ogha went spread-eagled between two trees, as though she were bound by invisible chains. For a moment, she looked startled, but then she broke free of the imaginary chains with a large snapping sound and a bolt of orange light that seemed to weaken Willow considerably.

Ogha laughed once more. "Oh yes, I'd nearly forgotten. The Slayer no longer works alone! She has _friends_ now, each with his or her own special power that they all use in tandem to back her up against the forces of darkness."

The laughter continued, and the Slayer's friends stared helplessly at her.

"Was this your grand plan? Surprise me with the power of the Slayer's sidekicks?"

"Mmm, there's a bit more to it than that," Xander said. "But it's not a bad idea – it's worked before."

"Oh, I'll bet," she said. She made steely eye-contact with Giles once more. As she spoke, she smirked, poking fun at the lot of them. "You've trained some _worthy_ warriors here, Mr. Giles. It's such a shame that I'll have to kill you before you've had a chance to make their education complete."

"I'm not afraid of you," he insisted, even as the super-vampire advanced on him. "You can do what you like to me, to us, but Buffy will get the better of you in the end."

She was now near enough to touch him. Ogha's human face became that of a vampire, and she grabbed Giles by the hair and wrenched his head sideways. "And I bet this will draw her out!"

With these words, she sunk her teeth into Giles' jugular.


	11. Chapter 11

**Part 11**

Willow stepped forward to try to help, against her better judgment. Xander held her back, and whispered, "Not yet, Will."

The three of them stood helplessly and watched as Ogha Dunver began draining Giles of his life force. His face registered horror, and then calm, as thought he initial pain were not enough to sway his faith in his Slayer's perseverance... and sense of timing.

Just as Giles was beginning to feel more than a little light-headed, he heard a loud thud, and the biting abruptly ceased. He fell to the grass, and Willow was immediately at his side with bandages and bactine, as planned.

Ogha Dunver was on the ground, and Buffy stood over her with a large branch in her left hand.

"Sorry to interrupt your mealtime," the Slayer said sarcastically. "But I have a very important announcement: you're going to die tonight."

"Hello there, fellow Daughter of Sineya," Ogha said ominously, but standing shakily. "I've been meaning to have a bit of a chat with you."

"Well, I've been meaning to give you a good pounding into the pavement, so I guess it's just kismet that we both happen to be in the cemetery tonight," Buffy said.

"Oh really? A good pounding you say."

"Yep."

Ogha smirked a bit, and then asked, "What makes you think you can do that?"

Buffy smirked back. "With a little help from my friends," she said, glancing meaningfully at Xander, "I can do anything."

Ogha had heard enough of the threats. She wound up for one of her supersonic, Slayer-flinging punches. Instead, what came was a pretty hard, but standard, punch to the face which didn't much register on Buffy's radar, followed by a hearty retaliation from the Slayer. Ogha fell to the ground once more.

When she stood up again, she looked genuinely confused. "Caught me off-guard."

"Uh-huh," Buffy said cheerfully. "Want to see me do it again?"

Another punch sent Ogha to her knees, and the vampire's retaliation, again, did not remotely match Buffy's.

The two simply stared at one another for a long moment, the vampire looking befuddled, the Slayer looking triumphant.

What followed was a fairly standard vampire/Slayer showdown, some variety of which Anya, Giles, Willow and Xander had seen a hundred times before. The vampires always got in a few good blows, but Buffy could take them and keep standing, and ultimately beat the snot out of most of the bloodsuckers. She could enfeeble them enough to stake them without much ceremony, get in a good quippy pun, and then the gang would go for ice cream. Or mochas, if it wasn't too late.

Ogha was growing more and more frustrated and impatient at her diminished strength, and did not know how to compensate for the loss of power. She began to cry out, practically sobbing out each punch, as though it was the greatest effort she had ever expended. Her anger was making her sloppy, inaccurate, inarticulate, giving Buffy a further upper hand.

Still, at one point, Ogha had Buffy off her feet, and was able to heave her over a large gravestone. However, Buffy's reprisal was much stronger and more efficient and she was able, quite literally, to take Ogha's legs out from under her with just one kick. From this, Ogha did not stand, she simply asked, "What have you done to me?" She was near tears, and if she hadn't felt so darn vindicated, Buffy might have felt sorry for her.

Buffy stood with her legs together and her arms folded across her chest. From somewhere, she had pulled a wooden stake, which now lay nestled in the folds of her elbows. Ogha Dunver, for the first time since she died, was legitimately frightened. The sight of that wooden stake threatened, tonight, to make her vomit.

"You had an eighteenth birthday, didn't you?" Buffy asked her opponent, now lying on the ground, resting on her elbows.

"Not with balloons and cake, but yes, I lived past eighteen," Ogha answered, without any irony or ire whatsoever.

"Tell me about it," Buffy said, kneeling down to Ogha's level. "Tell me about your eighteenth birthday, Ogha."

Ogha was distracted for the moment, trying to call up the memory. "It was bloody awful," she explained. "I fought a vampire who had a penchant for arson, how strange is that? Hell of a job climbing out of that burning basement without my powers."

"Without your powers?" Buffy asked her, innocently.

Ogha's face slowly filled with realization. Buffy thought she could actually hear the wheels turning as Ogha made the connection between a Slayer's eighteenth birthday and tonight's events. She stared Buffy squarely in the eye. "You bitch," she whispered.

Giles, Anya, Xander and Willow closed in near.

"You poisoned your own Watcher just to get the better of me," Ogha said to Buffy, accusingly.

"I didn't poison him. That stuff only works on Slayers. It has no effect on regular guys," Buffy said, shrugging. "If, however, someone who is a _Daughter of Sineya_ is to drink the solution out of, say, someone else's bloodstream... then, well, you know the rest."

Ogha took stock of the situation. Eventually, she looked up at Buffy and all of her friends and said defiantly, "Well, it's not like I'm an ordinary human now."

"Nope," Buffy said. "You're an ordinary vampire now. Those, I can handle."

She brandished her stake at Ogha, who recoiled from it, and then got to her feet clumsily. "You... you've only got a few hours," she stuttered. "I'll just keep you on the ropes until my Slayer strength comes back."

"I don't think I have time for that, Ogha," Buffy sighed, annoyed and advancing. "I have class tomorrow, and I've already wasted enough time trying to figure out how to get _you_ on the ropes. Frankly, I've had enough of the ropes. I'm done. You're done."


End file.
